


Crow In The Rafters

by QuintusSeptimus



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Violence, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, POV Multiple, Past Domestic Violence, Recreational Drug Use, Surgery, Unofficial Sequel, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28916667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuintusSeptimus/pseuds/QuintusSeptimus
Summary: Shilo wants to escape all that has happened at the opera, however a new player in town may see to it that she becomes even more entangled in the dark world of Geneco and her mother's past.
Kudos: 1





	Crow In The Rafters

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted anything before so I'm super nervous. I would love constructive criticism and welcome it in everything I post. Please don't feel like you can't share your criticism. Also please let me know if I've tagged anything incorrectly as my brain is a bit of a potato and I make mistakes. Thank you so much for reading :)

Chapter One

The night was a blur. She moved in slow motion, and all other things were just murky colours flashing by. All that could be seen clearly were memories in waking dreams. The shattering sound of a gunshot, the red of her father's blood coating her arms like a second skin. Her back had felt slick like paint with gore, was now clotted and crusty, matted in with Shilo's wig. She stumbled through the front door of her home, which felt less like a prison and more like a home to her, now that it was the only thing left of her father. An empty carcass filled only with bitter memories.

Shilo lay in the fetal position under the covers staring into the darkness of her room. So much had happened and her brain simply didn't seem to process it. She intellectually knew her father was dead, along with Rotti and Mag. No tears would come though. She had already cried and simply couldn't find the will. It made her feel guilty. Why couldn't she cry? Why could she only replay the same events of that night over and over in her mind. Her father told her that her entire sickness, her life, had been based on a lie. He had been afraid of letting her leave and being subject to what she now could see was a cruel twisted capitalist world which Rotti had tried to rope her into being a part of. She didn't know if what he had said about her being the heir to Geneco was still true. He had died before signing anything as far as she knew. Now was she truly free from it all, to make her own choices, or were the Largo children going to pursue her relentlessly like bloodhounds? All she wanted was to disappear; disperse into smoke, become part of the toxic air and float away into what was left of the atmosphere.

Shilo rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling, focusing on the blackness of it. Had it always been that dark, had her father and mother bought the house as is, or did they paint it and lay down new wallpaper like couples were wanton to do when expecting a new child? The thought just ended up drawing her back to the opera, her father pleading with her, the gunshot and cradling him in her arms as his life slipped away, like sand through Shilo's fingers.

She sat up onto the edge of her bed before putting her head in her hands, trying to rub away the memory. The idea the house she was in was no longer safe was not lost on her. The world now knew about her, and if they didn't then the reporters would be relentless in finding out who she was and where she lived. She needed to find some way to get out of the city as soon as possible. But how? There was no more money. 

Shilo rose from the bed and went across her room out into the hall. It was dead silent, still and empty. She made her way to her father's room and opened the door slowly, peaking in. It had been years since she had set foot in it. The last time had been when she was very little and had woken up after having a terrible nightmare. He had ushered her out and stayed with her that night, until she had fallen asleep again, reading a book of poetry by her bed.

The room looked the same now. The bedding plain, a simple dresser, bookshelf, armchair, and desk. The desk was what Shilo was interested in. It sat opposite the bed in front of the window, it's mahogany surface hadn't even collected dust. Like Nathan had just used it and would be home soon. Shilo approached and ran her hand over the grooves carved into its smooth surface absent-mindedly as she took a moment to look out the window at the city she was now free to roam unfettered. A city built on the broken bodies of the dead. One that she had seen at times on fire from her window, when there were riots in the streets against GeneCo. Although that had been a long time ago and it had only lasted two days before the people rioting were taken care of by Rotti's own private militia. The front garden and outside the gate remained empty of people. No GeneCo thugs hanging around. Just the dark front street of her neighbourhood outside. 

Shilo had been like a ghost, floating through the house, consuming the food in the pantry slowly and methodically. What she ate didn't even really taste like anything, just styrofoam blandness, like putting cardboard in her mouth with a hint of flavour lying deep underneath. The supply was now running low. Another thing that she would need to take care of. Penniless the only solutions she could think of would lead to her leaving the house for the market square. Something she wasn't interested in doing anytime soon.

Now was time to act. As drawers were opened and rifled through, papers being scattered across the floor, nothing of use was found. It was like a bottomless chasm of forms with various things written on them about appointments and procedures and old credit card statements. However, there was one thing that Shilo's fingers brushed near the back of the bottom left cupboard under a manila folder. As she drew it out in front of her, a metal chain twisted around her fingers. The silver links were weighted down by a pendant. Her fingers ran over the laminate carved surface of the an ivory victorian silhouette of a woman she recognized as her mother in profile. It wasn't super intricately detailed, but Shilo knew it had to be her. She had grown up being haunted by Marni Wallace's face in the halls of their home. The carved piece sent an all to familiar shiver down her spine. The hair held up in a large mass with ringlets falling down her back and shoulders, the ridge of her nose, the feminine jawline, and small chin, which Shilo had inherited were all present. She took the chain and placed it over her head, letting the cold metal of necklace lie heavily on their chest.

Around her lay the remnants of her searching for anything that would allow her to survive the next month. Or maybe the next couple of months. The only place left to search in the room was the one place she felt the most reluctant to look. On another rare occasion in Shilo's childhood she had ventured into Nathan's room. It had been the first and last time that she had been able to go in on her own. Often after that the door would be kept locked in the future. He had said it was because he didn’t want her to mess with his work. It was a delicate thing and any tampering could set him back for weeks, maybe months. She had been around seven, and wanted to explore. There was nothing Shilo had not seen in the mansion. From the kitchen, with its black marble countertops, to the damp cellar, with it’s rotten-wood door, that had expanded to the point of making it near impossible for a seven-year-old girl to wrench open. All that was down there was dusty wine bottles and old furniture, some packed away into moldy boxes. It smelled forgotten to her, and even the adventure of discovering the heirlooms of her family had lost what little charm it had within the course of a week. Eventually her musings and curiosity lead Shilo to her father's bedroom. A place forbidden to her during the daytime, almost as much as visiting her mother's grave was during all hours of the day, unless her father accompanied her. She had fully expected that the door would be locked, and when it wasn’t she had expected that she would hear her father scolding her from the other side of it, for interrupting his work or coming in without knocking. However, what she had found instead, peaking warily around the corner of the large wood door of her father's bedroom was silence. 

It looked almost the same as it did now, with the exception of the desk being disheveled in a way that would have only made sense to her father. A kind of controlled chaos that infected everything he did, from his work to the cluttered kitchen cupboards, where the cereal would end up in the spice cabinet and the spices sometimes in the fridge. He always knew where things were, and they were in the strangest places. 

What drew her in further wasn’t the prospect of looking over her father's coveted files. Shilo was still learning to read and had no interest in what she thought at the time, was her father's boring medical textbooks and papers. Now she was sure if she’d paid more attention to them, she might have noticed what they really were. Contracts, numbered and dated. Lives that were reaching their expiration.

What had drawn her attention was the half-open door to, what she had always thought up to that point, was a closet. It turned out that it was larger than that.

In current time, Shilo made her way to that same door, opening it slowly. What lay beyond was a long walk-in-closet of tons of stuff that must have belonged to a regal beautiful woman. Boxes labeled in her father's sharp cursive handwriting, elegant dresses lined the walls along with shoes, and near the back of a closet was a victorian style vanity. The mirror sparkled as if it had only been cleaned earlier in the day. In fact the whole closet was extremely clean. The only indication that it hadn’t seen use for a while, was the thin layer of dust that coated the surface of some of the boxes. The vanity, at least from Shilo’s vantage-point, seemed to be spotless. It was as if it had been constantly kept maintained for years even though it didn’t look like it had been used for a very long time.

She knew right away who it had belonged to. The thought made a lump form in her throat. Shilo could picture in the back of her mind, a version of her mother sitting there doing her makeup. Smiling at her reflection. Her father had maintained it up until his passing, and the thoughts of him brought up all those new memories. Fresh wounds. A raspy exhale came from Shilo, which was knotted with tension. The faint smell of him was laced throughout the small walk-in closet. Manila paper, coppery ink and now a barely perceptible scent of blood.

There were a few bottles of old nail varnish, shades of pale pinks and vivid burgundy, which had by now separated, laying upon the vanity and a few larger bottles of sparkling perfume, in their jeweled vail’s. Shilo slowly dropped down into the hard-cushioned seat and looked into the mirror back at her ashen bleary face. It was the face of a girl who had been through hell and came out the other end a complete messy broken shell. Sure she was free, but for how long, and at what cost. She sighed deeply, leaning her head into one of her hands, while running her other hands fingers briefly over her scalp which had finally started to grow back her hair. It was slow coming, but eventually it would all grow back.

Her eyes, cast downward, landed on the drawer to the left of the dresser. She hadn’t noticed that it was ajar, very slightly. Inside were most likely things her mother had used to get ready for the day. Things she had used when she was still breathing. The possibilities of the kind of woman she was had crossed Shilo’s mind many times. Though her father was often content to steep within his grief, he had not been willing to say much to how she had been. Outside of the fact that she was a kind, well mannered, beautiful and had died from what Shilo now knew was poison that Rotti Largo had used on her, he had not mentioned much else. Perhaps she would finally get a sense of the woman Marni was. The mother who had been hidden from her all these years, the enigma just out of Shilo’s reach, the shadow cast over her entire life.

As the drawer slid open with a groan, she looked down into a bare wooden space containing only one thing. A blue leather-bound notebook, fat with its contents. The very idea of what this new discovery laid bare for Shilo made her heart start to pick up pace. After her father’s death she thought nothing could really make her feel anything resembling excitement or wonder anymore. Apparently that was not true.


End file.
